People Dr Tristram Riley-Smith

Oxford Martin Associate, The Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre

Associate Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge

Dr Tristram Riley-Smith is Director of Research at the University of Cambridge Department of Politics and International Studies and External Champion to the Research Councils UK Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research (PaCCS: formerly known as the Global Uncertainties Programme).

Tristram has spent over 25 years working as a specialist in defence, security and infrastructure protection in Whitehall. He was posted as a Counsellor to the British Embassy in Washington DC in 2002 and in recent years has established and run a Centre for Science, Knowledge & Innovation.

Before Whitehall, Tristram studied Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He conducted doctoral research in the Kathmandu Valley, working among the Newari artists who create images of Buddhist and Hindu gods, and post-doctoral research in Thailand.

He has recently drawn on this training as a social scientist in writing his portrait of the USA in the opening decade of the 21st Century, The Cracked Bell: America and the Afflictions of Liberty, which was published in 2010.